No one is more shocked than me that I am giving this four stars. I hated the first part of the book due to the fact that the characters are so despicable. Set in the late 1920s/early 1930s, the Pembertons are a newly married couple on their way to establishing a timber empire in Western North Carolina. At the same time the government is in a race to acquire as much land as possible to set up the Great Smoky Mountains national park. (Maybe I should have capitalized all that but I'm in my car -- not driving -- so forgive me please). History nerds have much to adore. The Pembertons rub shoulders with many historical figures of the day, like the vanderbilts. The book highlights the often horrific living conditions for the loggers who are desperate for any job during the depression. The main character, Serena will do anything, and I mean anything, to keep her empire growing.

To get back to my original point, I probably would have stopped reading at about 100 pages but I was in a remote cabin for a week w no other reading material so there you go. As much as I despised the characters in the beginning, I realized I was firmly entrenched in the second half, unable to put the dang thing down. I was completely caught up, and the writing is pretty fabulous. Serena really is a psychopath and watching the author lay the groundwork for it is pretty gripping. I read another review where the writer said, "it's kind of like Macbeth in a logging community complete w a Greek chorus." I could agree with that. I understand they are going to make a movie out of it.

Writing is great, I couldn't stop reading it. Characters are horrible people but remember, it's a round world.

Melissa if you go to imdb.com you will see pictures and trailers for it. And horrible, horrible reviews by critics and people who are frustrated that it bears almost no resemblance to the book or original characters. They apparently are just a lovesick couple.

Flag Abuse

Flagging a post will send it to the Goodreads Customer Care team for review.
We take abuse seriously in our discussion boards.
Only flag comments that clearly need our attention.
As a general rule we do not censor any content on the site.
The only content we will consider removing is spam,
slanderous attacks on other members,
or extremely offensive content (eg. pornography, pro-Nazi, child abuse, etc).
We will not remove any content for bad language alone, or being critical
of a particular book.